Issues in Science

THE LIBRARIES PROGRAMME OF THE EUROPEAN COMMUNITY

BY: Derek Law, King's College London, University of London.

The proposal to have a libraries programme for the European Community is some six years old. It is stating the obvious to point out that the EC is a grouping of a dozen countries and that most important decisions require ratification by the member governments of all twelve states. This means that all progress is very slow. However a programme was finally agreed and put under the aegis of the Telecommunications Directorate, DG 13B. It spent some time defining four action lines and some nineteen sub-areas of work. These were aimed at such diverse topics as the provision of national bibliographies and the development of commercially viable library products.

However underpinning all of this was the notion that technology could provide the glue of progress. It was also felt desirable, where possible, to address the hugh disparity in provision between the less favoured southern countries and the industrially powerful north. All EC programme also require partnerships to be created between organisations in at least two member states. Another area of substantial interest is that of standards and their implementation. Each country has its own MARC format; AACR2 is unknown (and unwelcome) in many countries; authority control is a nightmare; OSI is often a statutory requirement, while TCP/IP is not generally available; Z 39.50 competes with the officially approved SR protocol; networking capacity varies enormously. In sum, the programme had to make a dozen independent states talk to each other, agree common standards, raise those a the lowest level and provide some incentives for fully developed libraries.

While work on the Libraries programme ground slowly ahead, the so-called IMPACT programme proved to be unexpectedly helpful. It had been set up to assess the size of and do some work on the European information market. Its proposers had looked for benefit in areas of public information such as tourism, but a few adept and aware librarians were able to promote projects covering areas such as electronic delivery of inter-library loan requests. This gave some early experience of dealing with the bureaucracy of Brussels.

After a great deal of inter-governmental politics, the libraries programme was eventually approved as a small part of a much larger science programme, with a budget of 25 Mecu (about 25 million US dollars) over three years. Before the programme was officially launched it seems fair to claim that it had succeeded in its first objective. Thanks to a series of seminars and conferences a cadre of Europhiles had been created, to the extent that a conference in Brussels in 1990 attracted 800 participants from all EC member states, a huge number by European standards. Each country had also created a National Focal Point (for some this required legislation) through which information on proposals and partners, so called "marriage broking" could take place. It was even claimed that for the first time French and Flemish speaking Belgian librarians were willing to talk to each other, albeit in English. Although a few single tender pilot projects had been awarded in the preparatory stage, the main contracts are awarded by competitive tender and so a call for projects was issued in late 1991. With such a well advertised programme there was no shortage of applicants, although the late switch into the larger science programme brought an emphasis on research which drove away many possible participants. In particular, the proposals from public libraries were disappointingly few and often lacked sufficient research activity to be included. The first call elicited 93 proposals with 415 participants from 379 organisations. Some bodies, such as national libraries were partners in several proposals. This lack of research experience was perhaps reflected in the fact that 24 of the 93 proposals were rejected on formal grounds. That is, they sent the wrong number of copies, were unsigned, were submitted late etc. Proposals which passed this first hurdle were rigorously refereed by independent assessors who were not told the names of the proposers. A third review then assessed financial viability.

Some fourteen projects were considered worth further consideration. These covered a variety of areas:

- electronic document interchange based on work by the GEDI group

- standards work on full colour images

- a standards project on European EDI messaging

- multilingual hypertext interfaces

- a videotext based European books in print

- harmonisation of facilities for the visually handicapped

- tools for incorporating journals information in OPACs

- problems of Greek transliteration

- reformatting ASC II catalogue records in UNIMARC

- using OCR for recon

- on-line access to audio-visual catalogues

- development of an SR kernel to link systems

- creation of a fine art photo archive linking major collections

- linking and making accessible music databases

Unhappily, only the first was considered sufficiently fully developed for simple approval and all of the others are being renegotiated with the EC, but are likely to go ahead early in 1993. Most of the first tranche of proposals were prepared by committed Europhiles and tend to be unkindly caricatured as "hobbyist" research. On the other hand, they have clearly demonstrated all the pitfalls of project preparation and partner seeking.

Before the dust has settled properly on the first call for proposals, the second call has been announced in October 1992, with a submission date at the end of the year. A third and final call may be made in late 1993. Opinions vary as to the outcome of the second call. One school of thought sees the submission of better quality proposals which have learned from the practical difficulties of the pioneering round. The pessimists fear that the difficulties faced by the enthusiastic Europhiles in the first round will deter all but the bravest or most foolhardy from the second call. As is ever the way with bureaucracies, consideration is already being given to plans for the post 1994 period and this has caused some reflection on the goals and ambitions of the Libraries Programme. The first goal of creating a constituency has been achieved. European librarians now mix freely at all levels and expect to co-operate with each other. So far the second goal of creating a coherent programme of work can not be claimed to have succeeded. The very openness and impartiality of the EC results in a preference for awarding contractors randomly rather than forming a coherent body of work, while the need for a strong research element has put off those with no previous experience of that sort. A sensible goal for the post 1994 programme would be to define a more structured and focused programme of work and ensure that the key stakeholders have some involvement in driving research and practice forward together. It would, however be a mistake to sound too pessimistic. Every European country now has a national bibliography and significant co-operation has been achieved in creating common CD-Rom formats for sharing national bibliographic records. These are not insignificant achievements.

Other interesting work is being undertaken by the networking community. Much of that mirrors the work going on elsewhere. It covers such areas as network resource guides, electronic document delivery, the creation of e-mail communities and provision of networked resources. The other active group in Europe is LIBER (Ligue des Bibliotheques Europeennes de Recherche), whose automation group has been actively involved in recording the work going on within national areas in the expectation of stimulating further bilateral activity. They have also been influential in persuading the Council of Europe, which covers all European countries and not just EC member states to set standards for retrospective catalogue conversion and, latterly to stimulate projects aimed at the integration into the mainstream of the former socialist states of Eastern Europe.

It is fair to say that the drives for library development within the EC come on the one hand from the information community, who see a resource of value, and on the other hand from the telecommunications community who see a way of providing information on an equal basis to all the citizens of Europe. It is undoubtedly a noble ambition to wish that the meanest and smallest branch library in Thrace should have access to the same resources as the grandest library in Berlin and it is hoped that the leverage of research grants will create the will and the community of interest to take these ideals forward.

Suggested further reading:

Dempsey, Lorcan Bibliographic access in Europe London, Gower, 1990

Foster, Jill User Support and INformation Services in the RARE Community: a status report. (RARE Working Group 3, Sub-Group USIS) Amsterdam, RARE, 1992

Law, Derek European cooperative ventures: project management issues (Library and Information Briefings, 28) Library & Information Technology Centre/British Library, 1991

Liebaars, H. & Walckiers, M. Library Automation and Networking: New Tools for a New Identity Munich, K.G. Saur, 1991